Nothing Can Harm You Here
by serenadreams
Summary: He's a rough man with scarred hands and an unshaven face, but he feels real to her in a world that's merely drifted past her eyes for far too long. Or, the one where Oliver's a homeless war veteran and love blooms over roadside bagels. AU
1. salvation

**_AN: This idea came out of nowhere, and I've been frantically scribbling it down for the past two days. I've got it all written out already, it just needs editing, so don't worry about ridiculous waits between updates, like with my other WIPs (hides in shame.)_**

**_I would also like to say, that while I myself have been diagnosed with PTSD, my disorder is related to childhood traumas. I have absolutely no experience with war veterans suffering from it. With that in mind, I've done my best to make the portrayal in this story as accurate as I can, without using something so incredibly serious as a mere plot device. _**

**_Please also take precautions in regards to trigger warnings, if you feel that discussion of PTSD and trauma might affect you negatively, don't read. The next chapter talks about it a lot more than this one, and I would hate to make anyone uncomfortable. _**

**_Serious stuff aside... I hope you like this! And please tell me what you think! Feedback is food for the soul my friends._**

* * *

_I never meant to fall for you, but I_

_Was buried underneath_

_And all I could see was white_

_My salvation_

* * *

For the past few months, the best part of Felicity Smoak's day, has been a breakfast date on the side of the road with an attractive homeless man who hardly talks.

It starts with a flat tire on an abandoned lane and a lot of cursing on her part because she never bothered to learn how to change the damn thing. And she _knew_ that was going to come back and bite her in the ass one day.

And then there he is. Kneeling down beside her car without a word, roughened hands easily handling the heated metal and rubber.

She'd be lying if she said she isn't frightened the first time she lays eyes on him. He emerges from the woods like a mirage, an anomaly in an otherwise horribly predictable situation.

She remembers backing up against her car, fumbling with the keys in her hand, wondering desperately how effective a weapon they would be against a man of his size.

But he doesn't hurt her. His eyes, a startling blue, beautiful and wild, run over her face, tracing every feature until her cheeks burn beneath his appraisal.

And without her permission, her body relaxes, a sense of ease and safety washing through her as he nods once, before dropping to his knees and getting to work on her car.

At the time, it's the most bizarre thing to ever happen to her.

While her life has hardly been sheltered, and at twenty-five, she's suffered more than her fair share of heart ache and loss, nothing is quite as inconceivable as an unshaven savior with holes in his shirt, unscrewing bolts with his bare hands by the side of a deserted road on a Wednesday morning.

She does her own appraisal as he works, eyes running over the bunched muscles on his shoulders, the dirty cargo pants, the uncut hair.

She remembers wondering if he's homeless, and then the stabbing sense of shame that follows the thought that not many homeless people look like him.

As if beautiful people can't fall on hard times.

She's surprised that she doesn't feel afraid. That she isn't unnerved by his silent presence, by his sudden appearance, by the complete and utter inexplicability of the whole situation.

She was raised in Vegas by a single mother. She was taught to fear strange men on the streets, to skirt away from the unfortunate, and avert her eyes. It's a philosophy that speaks to the human existence. And one she's eternally grateful she abandons for good, right there, on that day.

She smiles at him once he stands, her spare tire securely in place, the wrench she keeps more as a weapon than a tool, held loosely in his left hand. She holds out her own small hand towards him, with only a slight tremor in her fingers. He hesitates, and she'll always remember the look in his eye right then, the moment he thinks about running from her, and decides against it. When the wildness recedes to the edges of the blue, and she sees the warmth he's capable of, for the first time ever.

His hand is big around hers, calloused and strong, but _so_ gentle.

"I'm Felicity."

"Oliver." His voice is low and gravelly and she's sure it's unhealthy to be this attracted to a stranger she met on the side of the road.

He returns her smile then, small and barely there, but she swears her heart near stops all the same.

She's babbling about bagels a second later, and blushing as she grabs the bag from the passenger seat, carefully pulling out a sandwich and offering it to him.

He resists at first, but she's stubborn to a T, and it doesn't take her long to have him sitting opposite her on the grassy verge, sharing her breakfast bagel in comfortable silence.

She doesn't ask him any questions, and he doesn't offer up any information, and she's fine with that. His company is warm and despite the objective danger of the situation, that feeling of safety hasn't passed.

She watches him though, as subtly as she can, taking in the nervous tick in his fingers, and the way he stiffens at the slightest noise. He's jumpy and on edge, like he's ready to run at any moment.

But he chooses to stay, and share her breakfast, accepting her thank you for his act of kindness. And for that, as much as for his mechanical services, she's grateful.

An unexplainable sadness settles in her chest, when the last crumbs of their food are gone, and she looks at her watch and realizes how late she is for work.

There's a tug in her heart, like she doesn't want to say goodbye to him. Her beautiful wildman of a hero.

He seems to hesitate too, as though perhaps he's thinking the same.

And that's what spurs her to speak, more than anything else. The offer falling from her lips before her brain has a chance to catch up.

"You know, I take this road to work every morning. I can bring you your own bagel tomorrow, if you want."

His eyes flick to hers, clear and luminescent and she has to physically calm the thrumming of her heart.

"You don't have to do that."

"I'd like to."

He regards her, and she fears that he'll turn her offer down and this will become nothing but an anecdote to tell her friends.

But then he utters a single word and a warmth blossoms in her chest, taking root and flourishing.

"Tomorrow." With that he turns, reminding her of a wolf, slinking back into the forest, leaving her to wonder if she imagined the whole thing.

She takes the extra bagel the next day. And when she sees him waiting, the sliver of anxiety she hadn't even realized she'd been holding, dissipates.

* * *

It becomes something of a routine, she brings him coffee and bagels, every morning, meeting him by the side of the road in the very place they first met. He always looks surprised to see her, as though he wasn't expecting her to show up, but he's always there to meet her anyway.

She tries not to put too much thought in to why she keeps going back to him. She wants to say that she's doing it out of the kindness of her heart, being a good Samaritan and bringing a homeless man breakfast, simply because it's a nice thing to do. Such as him helping her, when she was vulnerable, and asking nothing in she knows that's not the case. She keeps going back, because she wants to see him again.

He's a man of few words, but as the days shift to weeks, she gathers little fragments of his story, and each one she treasures and stores away, evidence of his growing trust in her.

He tells her that he's a soldier, and from that she draws her own conclusions about his mental state. And if she goes home and spends hours researching the subject, she won't admit it anytime soon.

He fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. His long service was scattered with leaves spent with his family, a younger sister he only mentions once, briefly before his eyes cloud over and his lips fall shut.

Something went wrong though. She's unclear on exactly what happened. Whenever the topic of conversation drifts close to the moment that resulted in his current situation, he closes off from her. She doesn't push him. Her feelings for him, although perhaps inappropriate and unrequited, are true enough that she only wants to be a good point in his life, not another challenge. She doesn't want to force him to talk to her, doesn't want to make him feel as though he owes her anything.

And as long as he's in her life, in whatever strange capacity, she'll be happy.

She however, talks about herself with abandon. And he seems to enjoy listening to her babble. Sometimes she catches him watching her with a look that can only be described as awe in his eyes, rendering her momentarily speechless and bringing a flush to her cheeks.

He's a rough man with scarred hands and an unshaven face, but he feels real to her in a world that's merely drifted past her eyes for far too long. He's like an anchor, time feels more linear when she's with him, and she thinks that she might be able to understand that there's more to life than she knows, when she looks into his piercing eyes. It's a feeling she doesn't want to lose. A sense of hope and safety that rests with him and him alone. Which is as bizarre as it is ironic, because he's a homeless war vet with severe PTSD, safety and hope would likely be the last words any normal person would associate with him.

But she does.

So she keeps going back, and her heart keeps skipping a beat every time she lays eyes on him once again.

She knows in her heart that she's fallen in love with him, long before she ever admits it to herself. The very idea of it is a disaster in the making, and the sensible thing to do would be walk away before she gets in too deep.

But she never does, because she's drawn back to him again and again like a magnet.

* * *

The day he doesn't show up, she has a panic attack in her car, tears blurring her eyes as she stares at the empty road, devoid of his tall figure waiting where he always is.

They've met exactly here every day for two months, rain and shine and weekends alike, he's been there, waiting for her without fail.

He's never missed a day, and now he's not there and she can't breathe.

She tries to be rational; he probably simply didn't want the company this morning. Was she really naive enough to believe that they'd continue to have their little roadside breakfasts for the rest of their lives? It had to end sometime, right?

The thought of never seeing him again sends a bolt of pain through her heart, so severe that she's left gasping in pain.

But then she thinks of his face when she hopped out of her car to meet him the day before. The way the corners of his mouth had lifted, the blue of his eyes lightening and the tension visibly bleeding out of his shoulders. And she knows something's wrong. She can feel it.

So she waits.

She calls in sick for work, and she sits in her car, eyes trained on the trees beyond the road, willing him to appear through them at any second. She considers going to look for him, but realizes that since he always arrives at their meeting point before her, she has no idea which direction he comes from. Taking into account how large the forest is, and her general lack of hiking and navigational skills, she knows that venturing out alone to search for him would be useless. So she stays in her car, and she waits.

She waits for hours, her anxiety rising with every minute that passes. Horrible thoughts of what might have happened to him, plaguing her until her hands are shaking and her stomach is in knots. She forces herself to breathe deeply, calling on her years of yoga to calm herself, remain somewhat rational and focused.

She doesn't remember falling asleep. But a noise wakes her, a soft thumping against the window. Her eyes fly open, startled and disoriented to be met with nothing but darkness. Trying to calm her pounding heart, she reaches for the keys and turns on the ignition, headlights casting a path of light ahead, and the dashboard lighting up enough for her to see the blinking numbers on the clock. Almost ten pm. Her heart is sinking in her chest as she realizes that she's been waiting fourteen hours, when another noise just outside the car reminds her what woke her up in the first place.

Her fears for Oliver fall to the wayside temporarily, as fear for herself floods through her. Struggling to keep calm, she peers out into the darkness, straining to see anything but black beyond the windows. And then the passenger door is being wrenched open, light filling the car, burning her eyes, and she screams because _how could she be so stupid to forget to lock the doors?_

She scrambles to press herself as far away from the intruder as physically possible in the tiny space, shaky fingers scrabbling at her own door, searching for the handle, fear making her ineffective and clumsy.

But then she hears it.

His voice is gruff and pained, but she'd recognize it anywhere. The fear leaves her body as fast as it appeared, and the surge of relief that rushes through her is so acute she's left dizzy in its wake.

Because her name falls from his lips in a gravelly whisper and it's all she needs to feel safe again.

Her eyes adjust to the sudden light, and settle on his form, slumped over in the passenger seat. His shoulders are hunched, his face ashen, and she reaches for him automatically, hands lifting to his face, thumbs rubbing a soothing rhythm over his cheeks.

The fear is back as her eyes run over his body, searching for the injuries she knows she's going to find, even before she sees them. A ragged gasp escapes her and tears sting her eyes as, with a sense of dread, she pulls aside his jacket to see a startling scarlet staining his shirt.

He shifts slightly and her eyes raise to his to find him looking at her with something akin to adoration.

"Felicity." He utters the word like it's the greatest thing he's ever said, like the mere taste of it on his tongue is salvation and all that he needs.

And then his eyes are drifting closed and his head cants to the side, leaving her a sobbing, shaking mess, still hovering above him, fingers desperately grasping at his face.

"Oliver." She shakes him lightly, and then harder when she receives no response. "Oliver!"

His face is peaceful and still and she wonders if her name on his lips was a goodbye.

That thought more than anything is what compels her into action. She slips back into her seat, roughly turning on the ignition, and stamping her foot down against the accelerator so hard that the mini groans in response, tires screeching against asphalt as they drive away.

Her hand finds his, fingers lacing between his larger ones, thumb rubbing back and forth across his knuckles as she heads for the main road. Tears are blurring her vision and she has to keep blinking just to be able to see.

She doesn't realize that she's talking to him at first. But then she hears it, her own voice, thick with pain, murmuring words of comfort, soothing him as a mother might a sick child. But with every whispered "You'll be okay. You're going to be just fine." She knows it's not him she's trying to reassure, but herself. Because the thought of him _not_ being okay, is unbearable, unthinkable, more than her fierce heart will be able to survive, without finally fracturing for good.

She breaks every traffic law as she tears back towards the city, getting him to the hospital alive her only priority.

It takes her fifteen minutes, and she stops right outside the emergency entrance, legs almost giving out beneath her as she jumps out and runs through the doors. She screams for help, not caring that she's crying and shaking and people are looking at her like she's a crazy person. She's already running back for him, nurses hurrying behind.

When they catch sight of his prone figure in the car, there's yelling and suddenly more people are appearing, someone has a gurney and they push her out of the way so they can reach him. And she feels like screaming because they're taking him away from her and she was too scared to even check if his heart was still beating before she left him.

There's a fleeting, irrational thought that once they take him inside she'll never see him again. It has her racing to catch up, pushing her way in amongst the nurses until her hand can rest against his leg, the warmth of his skin, even through his pants, giving her just a moment of reassurance.

Someone's talking to her and she tries to focus on what they're saying, because she knows it's about him. She understands that they need to know how he got hurt, what his name is, who she is to him. But she doesn't have any answers to give them.

All she knows, is that she needs him to be okay.

* * *

She spends four long hours in a bleak waiting room, staring blankly at the pastel blue of the wall in front of her. There's no hiding from it anymore. She's in love with him. It's as clear as day to her now.

She's hopelessly, ridiculously in love with a homeless man she met on the side of the road mere months before.

Her mother would be so proud.

She doesn't know how it happened, or how it's even possible to fall so completely for someone she barely knows. But what she _does_ know, is that she's never felt like this before, she knows that somehow, with his quiet strength and vulnerable eyes, Oliver's secured a permanent place in her heart, probably right from that first morning she ever met him.

And now she's sitting in Starling General, with mascara staining her cheeks and squashed bagels in her purse, waiting for a doctor to come and tell her whether or not she'll ever see him look at her with those eyes again.

She's aware of the fact that even if he survives this, the chances of them getting some happily ever after together are practically non-existent. He lives in the woods and hunts for his food. Some might even call him mentally ill. But she knows that's not the case. He's damaged, and he has issues that have gone un-dealt with so long that they've left emotional scars as raw as the ones on his skin. But he's not sick. And he's not broken. And she'll never see him that way. No matter what anyone else might think.

But even so, even with her faith and trust in him, and even with her acceptance of the way he is, she doubts he'll ever seek anything more than what they already have, with her. And perhaps that's for the best. A relationship is probably the last thing he needs, and it's something she would never ask of him.

All she wants is to be a part of his life, however small, in whatever capacity he feels comfortable with. She'll be happy with that. She'll spend the rest of her life eating breakfast on the side of the road with him, if he'll let her.

He just needs to survive.

That's what she's praying for, when she hears someone calling her name. She looks up to see a doctor standing a few feet away, eyeing her cooly.

"Felicity?"

She jumps up, her heart in her throat as she answers. "Yes, that's me."

"You brought in a man earlier with a wound to his abdomen?"

She nods shakily. "Yes. Oliver."

"He's going to be okay. The surgery went well. His vital organs somehow survived most of the damage. He'd lost a lot of blood when he arrived, so we had to give him a transfusion, and he needed thirty-five stitches to close the wound. He'll need a lot of rest while he heals, and we're going to have to have a conversation about how this injury occurred. But that can wait for now. He's asking for you."

The doctor smiles briefly at the look of relief that must be obvious on her face, and motions for her to follow him. Her feet feel heavy and her heart feels like it's going to jump out of her chest, but she hurries to keep up, fingers tangling in the sleeves of her sweater, suddenly incredibly nervous about seeing him.

The doctor pushes open a door and nods for her to go ahead. She hesitates for only a second, before slipping past him, her eyes instantly falling to the bed in the center of the room.

Oliver lies completely still, staring at the ceiling, his tan skin standing out against the hospital gown, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. There are monitors with his vitals beeping idly beside the bed and she can see several cables disappearing beneath the neck of the gown.

She approaches slowly, her nerves slipping away as that sense of calm his presence always seems to bring, washes over her.

His eyes drop from their perusal of the ceiling tiles and find hers, a little distant and unfocused from the drugs, but as blue as ever.

Felicity." She doesn't think she'll ever get tired of hearing him say her name.

Hey." She smiles softly, hesitantly drawing up a chair before sitting down beside the bed. Her hand reaches for his automatically, fingers curling around his tensed fist before she can think about what she's doing. She isn't sure how he is about being touched. They've never had that conversation before, and now that she thinks about it, she doesn't think they've ever had any more physical contact than the occasional brush of fingers as they share breakfast, and that first handshake, that started it all.

But he doesn't flinch away, as she feared he would. Instead his hand opens and turns until hers fits against it, palm to palm.

She gazes at him for a long moment, eyes running over every familiar contour of his beautiful face, somehow even more striking under the harsh florescent lights, which doesn't seem fair.

He appears to be doing the same to her, and she inwardly cringes slightly at the mess she must be. Cheeks streaked with tears and hair a tangled mess. It doesn't look like he cares though, if the slight upturn of his lips, and the steady rhythm of his thumb over her knuckles are anything to go by.

She finds herself wondering how anybody could expect her _not_ fall in love with him, when he looks at her like that.

There are so many things she wants to say, beginning and ending with _I love you. _But what comes out is a whispered apology that had his brows drawing together in confusion.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I brought you here. I know you don't like enclosed spaces but… You were bleeding a lot and I was panicking a lot and I just…"

"Felicity." He cuts her off and his hand squeezes her smaller one gently. "Please don't apologize for saving my life." He says softly. "I'm sorry for scaring you."

She instantly begins to protest before she trails off, smiling widely for the first time in what feels like days.

"How about we both just agree that neither one of us has anything to apologize for, and move on?" She suggests, delighting in the spark of mirth visible in his eyes.

"Good plan." He nods his acquiescence and returns her smile with a small one of his own.

Her eyes leave his face and travel down to where she knows his wound to be, now hidden beneath clothes and blankets. She remembers the jagged edges of his skin, visible through his torn shirt, and the steadily growing red that left her trembling in fear only a few hours earlier.

"What happened?" She whispers, her free hand lifting to hover just above his abdomen of its own accord, as though she could somehow heal him with sheer force of will.

He watches her for a second, an unreadable expression on his face, before the hand that isn't wrapped around hers, grabs the one hovering over him, and brings it down to gently rest against his stomach. Her breath stutters in her chest as her fingers flatten against him. She can feel the bandage even through the blankets, and she strokes a feather light pattern along the edge.

"A bear." His voice is an octave lower than usual, and when she meets his eyes, she finds them darker than she's used to.

"What?"

"A bear. Got a good swipe in before I could put him down." He mutters, clearing his throat and breaking the eye contact that's quickly becoming intoxicating.

Her breath rushes out in a whoosh, and she feels a coil of anger settle in his chest as she lets that information sink in.

"You fought a bear?" Her voice breaks on the last word and she squeezes her eyes closed, forcing herself not to think about how much worse this could have been. "Why would you do that?"

"He started it." He says drily, and she knows he's trying to make light of the situation to put them both a little more at ease, but for some reason that only angers her more.

It's the fear that's making her angry, the knowledge of how close she came to losing him, along with the realization of just how much he means to her.

She scowls at him and a look of contrition crosses his glorious face.

"Hey, I'm fine. It's one of the perils of living in the woods."

She shakes her head and sighs, releasing some of the tension from her chest.

"I just… I care about you, okay? And I'd really miss our breakfasts if you died." It's the understatement of the century, but he's looking at her like she's water in the desert and she wonders how long it's been since somebody told him they cared.

"I'll never miss another one again." He vows with a weight to his words that leaves her reeling.

The moment is poignant and fragile and she feels like they're on the edge of a cliff. She's not sure what will meet them at the bottom, if they decide to take that jump, but as long he's beside her, she's pretty sure she wants to find out.

But then a nurse walks in and the spell is broken. Her hand slips from beneath his on his stomach, and she tries to remove her other one from his hold, but he tightens his fingers, and keeps it safely wrapped in his.

"The paperwork all checked out, Mr. Queen. We'll need to keep you in overnight for observation and someone will come by to ask you a couple of questions about what happened, but you should be able to go home tomorrow. You'll need to rest for a while, with minimal physical activity, to give you time to heal. And you'll need to come back in a few weeks to have the stitched removed." The woman pauses in her discourse and glances at Felicity before turning back to Oliver, who's looking decidedly nervous, a color she's never seen on him before. "Do you have someone who can take care of you for a few days? You'll need help changing your bandages, and it might be painful to move for a short while."

Oliver's eyes shift away quickly, and Felicity's heart speeds up at the thought of him returning to the woods, injured and alone.

"I'll help him." She rushes out, her hand gripping his a little tighter.

"Alright, we'll go over his care later, for now, you should get some rest, Mr. Queen." The nurse nods at them both and smiles briefly before making her exit, leaving a heavy silence behind her.

"Felicity…" Oliver starts, and she knows what he's going to say even before he gets the words out.

"No, Oliver. You are not going to go and sleep out in the open all alone, with a gaping wound in your stomach. I won't allow it. You can't risk your health like that. So I will sleep with you in the damn forest if that's what it takes for you to let me take care of you." She stops to take a breath, before realizing what she said, and instantly blushing bright pink. "That came out wrong." She sighs. "What I meant was… I don't want you to be alone."

"I appreciate that, I really do, but I can't ask you to-"

"But you're not asking! _I'm_ the one who's asking. Look I promise I won't hover over you or anything. I have a spare room, and it would just be a few days, until you're a bit more healed, and then I'll release you back into the wild myself." She tries to joke, even as she feels a little desperate in her need for him to let her do this. Let her take care of him, let her help him. "I live in a quiet neighborhood, and I don't have any pets or roommates, so it's way quieter in my house than it is in this hospital, and you seem to be handling this okay." He flinches slightly and she swallows the past the lump in her throat. "Oliver, I don't want to put you in a situation where you feel unsafe. But you need to let that wound heal."

She thinks for a second that maybe she's talking about something more than his physical injury, but lets the thought drift on. It's not the time or place for that. And perhaps it never will be.

His eyes are closed, and she'd worry that he's pulling away from her, if his hand wasn't still a steady anchor in hers.

"It's not me I'm concerned about." He says after a few minutes, his voice rough and low.

"What?" She whispers, brows drawing together as she watches every micro expression that crosses his face.

His eyes open and meet hers, and there's a sorrow there that she's seen before, in glimpses and flashes before he shuts it away.

"Felicity. When I came back… I was… I'm different than I used to… I can't…" He struggles to find the words, frustration and regret evident in his features. "I almost killed my own mother." He finally spits out, self disgust marring the words.

She tries to control her reaction, tries to reign in her gasp of shock, lest he interpret it for judgment, or horror. It _is_ horror, but not at him, _for him_. Horror at what he's gone through, at the pain she can feel seeping out of his every pore.

"And I couldn't bear it if… God if I hurt you, Felicity, I couldn't bear it. I couldn't…"

He tries to pull his hand from hers, but she holds it tight, raising her other to rest against his cheek, swallowing her tears when he flinches at her touch.

"You _wouldn't_. I trust you, Oliver. I trust you completely. I know I'll never be able to truly understand what you've been through, or what you're dealing with, but I know that I trust you, and I always will."

"You shouldn't." The self loathing is clouding the light in his eyes bit by bit and she feels him withdrawing, only now she realizes it's not to protect himself, but to protect _her._

"How about we compromise? You come home with me, and let me help you get better, but I do whatever I can to make that fear not be such a factor?" He looks at her questioningly, and she thinks for a second, before swallowing her nerves and continuing. "When… When that happened, with your mother, what was the situation? What prompted it?"

He won't meet her eyes, and she can feel a tremor in his fingers that sends a tug of empathy through her heart.

"I was sleeping. She woke me up…"

She nods, and squeezes his hand, letting him know he doesn't have to continue.

"Okay, so that's rule number one. I never try to wake you up. There are actually locks on the bedroom doors in my house, so if you wanted, you could even lock your door when you sleep. If it makes you feel better."

He's meeting her gaze again now, and the self-loathing has receded enough to reveal that look of wonderment that sends her stomach into knots every time she sees it.

"Anything else?"

He seems to actually think about it for a few moments, before replying.

"You have to lock your bedroom door too. And you need to get a baseball bat and keep it with you as long as I'm in the house."

"Oliver." She starts shaking her head, but he cuts her off, stern and unwavering.

"Felicity, if I have a flashback, or slip into a retrograde state, I might become irrational, and not know where I am. Especially in an unfamiliar environment. I know you want to think that I would never hurt you, and I wish I could share that faith, but I honestly don't know what I could do when I'm like that. So I need to know that you can protect yourself against me, if necessary."

His words are chilling. Not because of the notion of him hurting her, which is horrible in itself, but because of the understanding they leave her with, for what he's going through.

She can't imagine what it must be like, to fear yourself, to fear an inability to control your own mind. To fear bringing harm to those you care for with your own hands. She can't imagine the pain that must carry, the heartbreak. But she thinks she might understand now, at least a little, why he chose to retreat to the woods. To a life of solitude and recluse.

Because he _did_ choose, that much is clear. He didn't fall through the cracks, as so many do, he made the conscious decision to live the way he does.

And she respects that decision, as heartbreaking as it is.

So she relents, and agrees to his terms.

The look of gratitude on his face palpable in the stark room.

* * *

He insists that she go home to sleep, and as reluctant as she is to leave him, she does, with a promise that she'll be back tomorrow.

He in turn, promises that he'll be waiting.

And it's not until she's in her bed, covers drawn up around her chin and eyes staring unseeing at the dark ceiling, that she reflects back on what the nurse said.

His name. Oliver Queen.

There's something familiar about it. Not familiar in the same way as he himself is, like she's known him for far longer than she has, and can remember every line of his face with her eyes closed, but _literally_ familiar. Like she's heard it before, long prior to their meeting.

It's a jarring thought, as is the realization that although when she took him in to the ER, she was fully prepared to pay every expense he needed, but no one asked her. He'd ended up in a private room, and she hadn't paid a cent.

Oliver Queen.

He's a mystery. An enigma. A beautiful, wonderful, damaged man, who's been her every waking, and most of her sleeping, thoughts since she first laid eyes on him.

She's already in far too deep.

She's well aware that this... (She wants to think infatuation is the right word, but knows without question that her feelings run so much deeper than that.) Will be a roller-coaster that will likely derail with her strapped within.

But she finds it hard to care. She wants to help him. Heal him in every way she can, make him just a little happier for knowing her, if that's possible.

And if she gets burned along the way, then she can live with that.


	2. something real

_**AN: Hey guys, I know this is a couple days later than I promised, but I have good reason! I totally forgot about a Russian paper I had due on Monday, and of the three languages I speak, that's by far the worst. So that kind of took over my life for a couple of days. And then when I read through this chapter again, I realized I really wasn't very happy with it. So I had to put a bit more time in to try and sort it out a bit. **_

_**One more part after this! And then this unexpected little fic will be put to bed.**_

* * *

_I can hear you climbing_

_From places only you can understand_

* * *

Felicity wakes early, despite her late night, probably in some unconscious need to spend as little time away from Oliver as possible. So she spends the morning counting down the minutes until it's a decent time to go back to the hospital, distracting herself with menial tasks in an effort to take her mind off him. As if that's possible.

She clears out her spare room, making the bed with her best sheets and piles of pillows, selecting a few books she thinks he might like from her ample collection and stacking them on the bedside table. She knows he won't care about little details like that, but she finds herself enjoying it; thinking of ways to make him goes to the store and stocks up her fridge with lots of meat and protein, knowing that a guy like him probably can't survive on salad and ice cream as she tends to.

And bagels, of course.

The simple tasks keep her mind off the big questions. The ones she's still not sure she has a right to be asking. There's a part of her that wants to put her very capable hands to good use and spend a few hours on the Internet finding out everything there is to know about him.

Oliver Queen.

The man she's inadvertently managed to fall in love with. The man she's invited into her home and into her heart.

But she doesn't do that. Not only because another small part of her is a little afraid to know. Like the second she does, her bubble of breakfasts and laden looks will be gone forever. But even more so because she wants him to be the one to tell her. If he so chooses.

She trusts him.

If there's one thing in the world she's one hundred percent sure of, it's that she trusts him. And along with that trust, comes respect.

The two have always shared a close corner in her heart.

It's her respect for him more than anything else that keeps her from reaching for the keyboard. He's chosen to share so much of himself with her already. From his small sentences where in he says so much with so few words, to the fact that he kept coming back to her, morning after morning.

It wasn't just for the free food. She determined pretty early on that he didn't need the bagels to survive. You don't stay as buff and strong as he is without eating plenty.

If she thought he was starving, she would have brought him food by the truckload. Or car load. Whatever her bank account could swing.

But no, he didn't need her for survival.

He _chose_ to return to her.

The bagels are symbolic, in her mind at least. He accepted help he didn't strictly need. He let her in, not entirely, but enough to see the good man she knows him to be.

So she doesn't Google the name rattling around on a loop in her brain. She doesn't even question the hospital staff when she finally finds herself back within those stark corridors. Her queries are limited to a quick check that he has no outstanding bills, and once she's assured that he doesn't, she merely smiles and nods, and says nothing more.

She's a curious person by nature, and she's rarely been good at biting her tongue, so she's pretty proud of how she's handling the whole situation. It seems to come naturally to her though, it's almost instinctive, knowing the right thing to do for him, the right things to say, and not say. She's never been like that before. The wrong thing has always been the first to fall from her lips, and while she's never been exactly awkward, she's definitely had a distinct lack of tact at various important moments in her past.

But not with him.

Perhaps her unconscious knows something she doesn't.

Either way, when she's finally once again standing just outside his hospital room, her heart beating a wild pattern in her chest, her hands clammy at her sides, she finds she doesn't care about the reasons.

She's simply grateful.

Grateful that by chance, or luck or maybe even fate, he's a part of her life.

When she pushes the door open and her eyes meet his she almost cries because she's so fucking done for.

She's ruined and wrecked and every other tragic adjective she can think of because she loves him and it's exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

The smile he greets her with lets her know that the morphine drip secured in the crease of his elbow is still doing its job. But she returns it nonetheless, taking slow, measured steps towards him. Forcing herself not to do something stupid like wrap her arms around his chest and bury her face in his neck.

"Hi." He breathes, his eyes running over her face, warmth and peace the only things she finds flickering within them.

Definitely a nice dose of drugs, then.

"Hi." Her smile stretches to the point of hurting her cheeks and she realizes that none of it really matters anyway. The how's and the why's.

All that matters is that her heart's never felt like this before, and she doesn't want the feeling to go away.

The look on his face makes her wonder if perhaps he's realizing the same.

* * *

Their first night under the same roof is relatively without incident. Oliver's still pretty strung out on painkillers by the time they get home and she thinks that's probably a good thing in the end. It keeps his mind off the unfamiliar territory and the enclosed spaces.

And most of all, off the fear that he'll hurt her as she sleeps.

As it is, his eyes are a little unfocused when she wishes him goodnight and the emotion within them is decidedly un-panicked. In fact it's just about the opposite.

She tries not to read too much into that look. Not to imagine him gazing at her like that every morning and every night, gentle and warm.

She tries, and fails.

The thought of him just down the hall from her as she lies in her bed is enough to make her cheeks warm and her heart flutter. He's been a mere fragment of her physical world for what feels like an age.

Now, to have him here, integrating with the rest of her life, it feels like puzzle pieces coming together.

He's real and within reach and not some fantasy her overworked mind conjured.

On that first night, with him sleeping in her spare room, two locked between them, it feels like a beginning.

Felicity's heart is light and warm in her chest, a sense of safety and contentment washing over her until her eyes drift closed and sleep pulls her away.

* * *

Oliver's distant in the morning. Not from the medicine, which Felicity fears he hasn't taken, but from her, from the world.

She doesn't mind though, happy to let him deal with the situation in his own way. Let him approach each challenge to the best of his ability, in anyway he knows how.

She's not going to force him to chat with her over breakfast in her kitchen if he doesn't want to. She's not going to make him to watch a movie on her couch and argue over popcorn. That's not who he is, it's not who _they_ are. And she would never ask him for more than what they have.

So she's content to go about her usual morning routine, humming stray notes of an old song under her breath with a mug of coffee warming her fingers. She's happy to let him watch her, a mixture of fear and delight carefully contradicting each other in his features.

It's not uncomfortable having him there. Not that she thought it would be. She wouldn't have invited him if she'd ever felt uncomfortable in his presence. Her mother used to say that women are born with a heightened sense of danger when it comes to men, evolutionarily designed to protect themselves from the darker sides of the opposite sex.

Felicity hasn't always relied on that instinct. Sometimes she's ignored the feeling of unease that settles around her like a musty blanket, when in the presence of a man not worthy of her time. And every time she has ignored it, she's come to regret it not long after. But she knew, right from the first moment Oliver approached her on the side of the road, physically imposing and clearly capable of causing her great harm, that he never would.

She felt instantly comfortable with him.

Which is why he's with her now, reading a book at her kitchen table.

Every now and then his eyes flicker from the page to the windows, and then to her, before falling back to John Grisham's prose.

It doesn't take her long to realize what he's doing. Much like her, with a DVR full of slightly sub-par TV shows, and her freezer full of mint chip, he uses fiction to distract himself from the world.

She can tell he's feeling out of place and uneasy. So he chose to bury himself in another world, to let someone else's words fill his mind until his own thoughts fade to the background. It's a process she's very familiar with. And she's happy to leave him to it.

She called in sick from work again the day before, when she told them she was highly contagious and puking everywhere, they were more than willing to give her the week off. And considering the fact that her two year employment with the tech company is completely blemish free and she's only had one two week holiday since she started, she's pretty sure she's earned enough brownie points to deserve it.

So she spends a few hours doing some work she can do from home, tapping at away at her laptop, with her tablet perched by her side.

The silence is comfortable and amicable, and when she catches him flinching when the phone rings, she studiously pretends not to have noticed.

* * *

The first bump in the road comes in the form of the compulsory change of his bandages around noon; the wound has to be cleaned and disinfected each day to prevent infection. The nurse had gone over his care instructions three times before they left the hospital, with Oliver grumbling in the background that he was fine and they're making a fuss, sounding a lot more like a petulant child than the soldier he is. It was rather sweet actually.

She's half dreading and half looking forward to the inevitable moment. Dreading because she doesn't want to cause him pain, emotional or physical, and looking forward to because she wants to take care of him. Wants to show him without words that she'll do anything within her power to help him. It's why he's there after all.

The few hours spent in their separately compatible bubbles have eased some of the tension from his face, and the looser set of his shoulders tells her that he's not on the verge of fleeing at least.

So she asks him to go and wait in the bathroom while she gets the supplies given to her by the pushy nurse.

She'll remember the moment she walks into that small room after him, for the rest of her life.

He's sitting on the edge of the tub, jeans slung low around his hips, eyes distant, chest bare.

She'll remember with vivid clarity, the chill of sorrow that settles in her bones. The horror that takes root in her heart and burrows out, until her fingers are shaking and her legs feel numb.

Her eyes flutter shut briefly, trying to block out images that suddenly plague her mind. Of him being hurt far worse than this. Far worse than a scratch from a wild animal, far worse than the time she broke her leg when she was twelve and was sure there was nothing more painful in the world.

The evidence of every trial he's endured is written across his skin in permanent marker. A much harsher form of decoration than his tattoos.

If she could have one wish right then, it would be to undo the suffering he's braved. Even if it meant he never crossed her path.

And that's the moment she realizes the true extent of her feelings. Because yes, she's done denying that she loves him. But she's been in love before. She's felt that tug in her heart that walks hand in hand with the yearning for someone's never ending presence. But this is more than that. This is new and unfamiliar, because it goes beyond just wanting him in her life.

She wants whatever's best for _him_. Not her.

It's a selfless kind of love and it's oddly liberating.

Freeing and beautiful.

He's watching her closely when she opens her eyes, and although his expression is guarded, there's an air of vulnerability about him that's completely incongruous with the battle worn body she sees before her.

Her eyes meet his, and she keeps her expression as open as she possibly can, showing him that her reaction stems from pain, not disgust. Because she can tell he sees himself something unseemly, something _ugly_.

A word she'd never use to describe him.

Scarred or otherwise.

Skin or soul.

It's impossible to tell whether or not he understands her silent message, but he doesn't run, he doesn't physically pull away. His face remains inscrutable, but he doesn't flinch when she takes a step closer, mentally cataloging each scar, from the big to the small.

Memorizing where they lie.

She doesn't try to guess the cause of each one, not only because it hurts to think about, but because again, that's his information to share, if he sees fit.

She kneels before him, and his hand grips the edge of the bath so tight his knuckles turn white.

Allowing herself one moment of weakness, she lifts a hand and carefully rests it against his shoulder, her thumb just catching the edge of one of the many old wounds, thrumming gently back and forth across it.

"I'm sorry." She whispers, and now he's looking at her with confusion, dark eyes clouded and questioning. "I'm sorry the world hurt you."

It's not her apology to make, and she knows that it's not so much the _world_ that hurt him, but people, life, humanity or lack thereof. But she says it anyway, because she _is_ sorry, not from a place of guilt, but a place of sympathy and love, for every moment of suffering he's ever endured.

She dodges his eyes, a little afraid of his reaction to her words, and starts to pull away, when a roughened thumb drags lightly across her cheekbone, a large hand slowly, ever so gently, cupping her face and tilting it up.

There are no words falling from his mouth, no smiles of reassurance, no platitudes. But she doesn't need any of that, because he's looking at her like she's the sun and she thinks that if he looked at her like that every day, she could survive on that alone, food and water be damned.

His hand falls away after a moment, and while her skin mourns the loss, nerves tingling where he touched her, she takes a deep breath and forces her mind to focus on the task before her, emotions falling by the wayside for a little while.

So she cares for his wound, unflinching in the face of the torn flesh and harsh stitches. Her hands are steady as she carefully cleans it and replaces the wrapping with a new one.

When she's done, he watches her for a long moment before speaking. And when he does, it's the last thing she expects him to say.

"Why?" She stares at him in bewilderment for a second before he continues. "Why are you doing this for me? You don't… You don't owe me anything Felicity."

This time it's her hand on his cheek, the soft skin of her fingertips brushing against his stubble.

"It's not about owing you anything, Oliver. I care about you. I _want_ to do this." She whispers, letting him see the honesty shining in her eyes.

* * *

Things change after that. It's almost imperceptible, but she notices. He relaxes. He stops jumping at the everyday sounds of the house, he stops watching her like he's scared she's going to disappear at any moment. He lets himself feel comfortable in her home. And that in itself, is enough to bring a smile to her face.

They fall into a routine fairly easily, as the hours shift to days.

He still insists she lock her bedroom door at night, and one of the first things he did upon arrival to her house was check that she did in fact have a baseball bat. She proudly told him that she'd had one all along anyway. She didn't like weapons, but wasn't naiive enough to live alone with absolutely no means of protecting herself. There was a clear pride in his eyes when she told him that, and she added that look to her list of _ways Oliver Queen makes her heart skip with only his eyes_.

* * *

It's not all easy sailing. And who could expect that it would be.

Felicity likes to hope that she has a positive effect on his mental state, but knows that stuff like that doesn't get simply washed away by warmth and comfort. She understands that the underlying issues that caused his trauma are still there, and likely always will be. However comfortable he looks in her kitchen making coffee every morning.

So when the fourth night of his stay brings a harsh reminder of that, she's unsurprised to realize that she's been half waiting for it to happen.

Demons pull at the corners of his dreams, and across the hall and through two doors his mumbles and shouts of anguish wake her from a disturbed sleep of her own.

She doesn't dare leave her room and go to him, as she so yearns to.

Not for fear of what he might do to her.

_Never_.

But for fear that he might leave once he realizes that she broke their cardinal rule. If he thought she'd risk her own safety for him like that, she has no doubt that he'd be out the door in seconds.

He has a protective streak that seams to run in his very blood.

But she thinks it says something important about her, _about them_, that she's more scared of losing him than she is the strength of his hands.

So instead, she sits on her bedroom floor, back against her door, listening as he tosses and turns, as he fights invisible forces to the death and beyond.

It's the cry of her name that breaks her. The pure agony in his voice as the word is ripped from his chest. And her eyes are filling with tears even as she's calling back to him.

She prays she doesn't make it worse, and she calls out his name, loud enough to hear through the wood and space that separates them, loud enough to penetrate his dark unconsciousness.

There's a gasp and a crash and she just keeps talking to him, soothingly, calmly. Injecting as much comfort and reassurance as she possibly can into her voice and words.

There's silence on his end, and for a moment she thinks his dreams have passed and left him to sleep peacefully.

But then her keen ears make out the click of his door and the soft falls of his sock clad feet. She hears clothes rustling and a melancholy sigh, and realizes that he's sitting down outside her room, much as she is within.

"I'm sorry I woke you." He says quietly and she shakes her head despite the fact that he can't see her.

"Don't be." She replies just as softly, and after a pause. "Can I open the door?"

He hesitates, and she knows he's considering saying no. Considering retreating to safe ground, away from emotions that could run too high. Already are.

"If you want." He finally whispers and her heart skips more than one beat in response.

With slightly shaky fingers, she stands and undoes the lock, swinging the door open to reveal him sitting against the wall beside it, legs stretched out across the passage.

There's tension in every cell of his body. In the way his hands are balled at his sides, in the hard set of his shoulders, in the muscle ticking in his jaw. But every part of him, the ones mentioned, and a million more, visibly release at the sight of her.

The smile she offers is small but sure, and as she moves to slide down the wall and sit beside him, she's relieved that he doesn't move away. Doesn't even flinch.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks, before quickly rushing ahead to correct herself. "You don't have to. Obviously. It's fine if you don't want to. I just wanted you to know that you can talk to me if you want. About anything."

He smiles slightly and she yearns to touch him. To reach for him and soothe his pain, wipe away the lines on his forehead and the heaviness in his eyes.

"Thank you. I think… I think not tonight." He murmurs carefully. "But maybe someday soon. If you'll still let me."

She nods vigorously. "Anytime."

"Could you… Do you think you could just sit with me for a little while?" He asks, sounding unsure and younger than his thirty odd years.

"Of course." She shuffles a little closer to him, a show of solidarity, support, in anyway she thinks he might accept it. "I'll stay as long as you want."

On hardwood floors, in the early hours of the morning, with the air quiet but for the distant singing of early rising birds, they sit together, side by side. And as the shadows shorten, the sun slowly rising and casting its light through half drawn curtains, Felicity's head finds a place on Oliver's shoulder, and two sets of blue eyes fall closed.

* * *

Felicity wakes in the comfort of her own bed, blankets tucked up around her chin. A quick glance at the old fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table tells her that hours have passed. She makes a valiant effort not to think too hard about the fact that Oliver must have carried her to bed. But the thought of him lifting her into his strong arms and tucking her in under her covers, sends a flurry of butterflies dancing through her stomach. She's really sorry she was sleeping for that particular event.

She expects him to apologize to her, a prepared rebuttal already on the tip of her tongue as she ventures downstairs. But instead, he meets her in the kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee and a look of gratitude that floors her.

When his hand finds her shoulder in an innocent gesture of appreciation that means so much more coming from him, she's half convinced she's still sleeping.

But then he ducks down to her eye level, the sincerity on his face reaching new depths, and whispers a gentle _thank you, _so close that she can feel his breath against her skin. And she knows she's not dreaming. Because nothing's ever felt quite as real as that.

As _him_.

* * *

They grow even closer as the days progress, and those things that she never thought would happen, home-cooked meals in front of the TV and toothbrushes sharing a glass on the edge of the sink, slowly become a reality.

His body heals fairly quickly, and when the week draws to a close, they both know that he can manage on his own from that point on. But neither mention it.

He tells her once, very firmly, that she needs to tell him the second she wants him to leave. And she agrees easily, knowing that that'll never happen, and when he does leave, it will be at no one's volition but his own.

It's on his tenth night under her roof (she's begun to refer to it as _their_ roof in her head, but that's a slippery slope she's not quite ready to fall down just yet) that their relationship takes that final leap. A leap from something undefined, fragile and unexplainable, to something solid and unshakable.

Something that could, one day, have many, many names.

Over the course of his stay with her, he has opened up bit by bit, a little here and there. And the collection of facts that she's learnt about him, grows steadily with each dinner spent with a bottle of wine and nothing but each others company.

But there are still big chunks missing. Mostly surrounding his family, in name and blood, and his time spent abroad.

But that all changes on a Thursday night, with warm food in their bellies and the gentle hum of a slightly dull comedy in the background, when Oliver unexpectedly presses a small photograph into the palm of her hand.

She turns to look at him, and there's a somber air to his features that gives her pause.

"Did you mean it, when you said I could talk to you, when I was ready?" His voice is rough and low, and both that, and his words makes her stomach flip.

"Yes." Her heart is picking up its pace, and she forces herself to stay calm, to be the anchor he needs her to be.

There's a long moment where he doesn't speak, just watches her, almost as if assessing whether or not he's doing the right thing. He nods to himself and swallows loudly before continuing.

"There's something that I need to tell you. And I think I've only held back this long because I don't want to change the way you look at me." His eyes fall closed, and her hand finds his where it rests between them.

"Nothing will _ever_ change the way I look at you." She curls her fingers around his, and squeezes. Punctuating her vow with physical assurance.

"I'd hold off on that promise, if I were you." He sounds so sad and resigned that it sends a rush of protectiveness crashing through her like a wave.

"There's no need."

He sighs, but doesn't argue the point, instead nodding for her to look at the picture in her hand. And when she does, she's met with the pretty face of a teenage girl grinning back at her.

"That's my sister. Thea. She's ten years younger than me. She lives just outside the city with my mother and stepfather." He shifts slightly, and runs a hand over through his hair. "I haven't seen any of them in three years."

She moves a little closer to him, in a silent show of support,

"When I came back…" He breaks off and closes his eyes, as if collecting his thoughts before trying again.

"I didn't expect to come home the same man who left. But… I guess I didn't expect to be quite as affected as I was. _Am_." He takes a deep breath and the next words are accompanied by his hand tightening around hers.

"I did bad things, over there. I killed people. And I know that's the job. That's what I signed up for. But you never realize how… You never know what it means until you've done it. And now... God I see their faces every day. Every time I close my eyes."

He sighs and his eyes fall to the picture still held tightly in her shaking hand.

"When I first came home, and I was sleeping in my bed again, I felt like I didn't deserve to be there. I didn't deserve to be rescued and taken home after what I'd done."

Tears fill her eyes, but she stays as quiet as she can, not wanting to interrupt him.

"That's when the dreams started. The faces of the people I killed… It was Thea, and my mom, and anyone I've ever loved. Every time I went to sleep, I murdered them, Felicity and I couldn't…" He has to visibly center himself, taking a deep breath and squeezing his eyes closed before continuing.

The movie flickers in the background, long forgotten, and Felicity's glass of wine is neglected on the coffee table.

"I haven't had them so much since I've been here. I thought it would be worse, but I've only one."

"That night…?" She asks softly, remembering the stark fear in his voice as he cried out into the darkness.

He nods.

"I was you, that time. It was you that I killed, over and over again. Just like the others. And I can't ever stop it, it's like I'm watching from inside my own body, unable to control my actions."

All she can do is offer up her own faith in him, and hope it's enough for two.

"Oliver. That's never going to happen. I promise. _I promise_." She's fierce in her need for him to understand, to _hear_.

And he does.

"I know." His hand finds her cheek. "I don't think I cold ever hurt you. I think even in my darkest moments, I'm completely incapable of it."

She can't help the watery smile that follows that proclamation, or the way her pulse has picked up at the feel of his roughened palm against her skin.

"That's good." She says gently.

"It's very good." He agrees.

But then he sighs and lets his hand fall away.

"The dreams… They weren't the only reason I left." He rests his arms on his knees and stares a hole into her carpet, and she finds herself worrying that maybe this is going too far, too fast. Maybe talking to her about this now will cause more harm than good.

"You don't have to tell me. If it's too much, you don't have to." She gives him an out, because he doesn't owe her this. He doesn't owe her any explanations.

But his reply is swift and sure, and she accepts the gift he offers. Taking it as the sign of complete and utter trust that she knows it to be.

"I want to. I think… I think, if I'm ever going to be able to move on, properly. Then I need to talk about it."

His nerves are visible in the scratching of his thumb against his finger, in the slight jog of his knee beside hers, but he continues, ever the valiant warrior.

"There was a mission… I was in a specialized unit at that point and we were sent… Six of us were sent to rescue three POWs from an enemy camp."

Her thumb rubs over the ridges of his knuckles.

"The whole thing was badly managed, badly planned. We were going in blind, we didn't have nearly enough Intel and we all knew it. But orders were orders. It went sideways pretty quickly. We were outnumbered, and at a disadvantage on their territory. We lost four of our team." He breaks off and she can see that he's struggling to maintain his composure, his eyes far away, remembering things he wants to forget. "Tommy." His voice breaks on the name, and she wishes she could do more to help him. _Anything_. But all she can do is listen.

"He was my best friend from back when we were kids. We upped together, and served together and… He died right in front of me. I tried to get to him, but I was too far away, and I was out of rounds. I was meant to cover him. But there were too many of them, and we didn't have enough ammo. And he just…" A solitary tear slips silently down his cheek as he talks and she shuffles even closer than she already is, resting her head against his shoulder, offering what comfort she can with her touch. Even though it feels like her heart is breaking along with his. "God they just kept shooting him. Even when he was down, they just shot him over and over and there was nothing I could do." A tear of her own escapes her eye, but she doesn't make a sound. "John Diggle was the only other survivor of our unit. He was my training sergeant when I first joined. He's a good man." She doesn't miss the use of the present tense there, and lets herself feel the momentary relief of that knowledge. "Digg and I… We couldn't get away. We were held there for thirteen months and eight days."

She can't hold back the ragged gasp that escapes her then, because she had wondered, she'd been aware of the possibility, but to hear it spoken aloud… She's left with a wildly beating heart, and a fear that isn't her own, racing through her veins.

"The men we'd been sent in to rescue were put down not long after our arrival, and we didn't think anyone would come for us. We thought we'd get written off. Not worth the loss of life. But they did. There was some deal… Even I don't know the details of it. It took a year, but they came. It was meant to be an easy exchange. Us in return for whatever the hell they'd agreed on. But there was another player and suddenly we were under fire from every direction."

He jumps up, startling her, and she watches with wide eyes as he starts to pace like a caged animal. There's a bead of sweat running down his temple, and his hands are fisted so tight she's sure his fingers will break under the pressure.

But she's not scared.

Of him or for him.

Because they're both safe here, in her warm little house, and she knows that he's not having a flashback. He's not slipping through her fingers and into another reality.

He's choosing.

He's choosing to share his burden, and with that comes the choice to stay. To trust. To hope.

So she lets him pace as he talks. Lets him try to expel the excess energy she can see building in his muscles.

"We'd been kept in the dark for a year, Digg and I were barely able to function, let alone fight, but they gave us guns and… I guess after being trapped for that long the urge to survive was pretty strong. We took them out. About a dozen… They went down pretty easy, we only lost two from the rescue team. But it turns out there was a reason for that."

He stops suddenly but doesn't move back towards her, he stares at the ground and she can _feel_ his anguish. It's palpable and endless, and full of so much more pain than the scars on his skin.

"Kids. They were just kids. Aged about fifteen to eighteen. They were child soldiers, my sisters age. And we just… We killed them. Every last one."

She's on her feet beside him in a second, not feeling the tears running tracks down her cheeks, or the crescent shaped imprints her nails have left in her palms.

"You didn't know. You couldn't have known." She grips his arm and forces him to look at her.

She's not excusing the act. She's not saying it's not the most terrible, _tragic_ thing she's ever heard. Because it is.

It's unthinkable.

It paints a picture of a world she doesn't want to be a part of. Where children die in wars that don't need to be fought, and good men fall to destruction to survive.

But there's guilt and self-loathing coming off him in waves, and while she's not excusing the act, she can see where the blame truly lies, and it's not on Oliver's shoulders. It lies on the injustice of the world, and on the people who sent kids to fight their battles.

She doesn't say all of that though. She just lets him see her, and shows him that the way she looks at him, hasn't changed at all.

"It doesn't matter." He whispers, eyes boring into hers. "I can't ever wipe that blood off my hands. You can't erase that guilt, Felicity."

He turns and sits back down on the sofa, suddenly looking exhausted and drained. She sits beside him, her hand finding his once more, relieved when he lets his fingers tangle with hers.

"When I got home, my mom threw a party at our house. Invited just about everybody we know. It was this huge, opulent thing with caviar and champagne and everyone kept thanking me for my service, and congratulating me and…" He stares at the lilac nail polish on her fingers, a stark contrast to the calloused sinew of his own hand.

"All I kept thinking was _what right do I have? _What right did I have to accept their praise? What right did I have to just go home and live in the lap of luxury, when so many of my friends would never get that chance? When the _teenagers_ we killed would never… What right did I have?"

She understands. Understands that he's been living a sort of penance ever since that day. In his mind and with his body. A self-inflicted form of punishment.

"So you left?" She asks softly, already knowing the answer.

"I just couldn't be there. I couldn't live with servants and all this _stuff _in that huge house, with people treating me like some sort of hero. It made me sick. So I left."

He turns further towards her, hands cupping her face, thumbs brushing away tears. And she can't breathe because it feels like he's surrounding her, and she'd happily drown if it was at his side.

"I don't deserve good things, Felicity. I don't deserve a comfortable bed and home cooked meals. I don't deserve my sister looking at me like I'm her hero, and I definitely don't deserve you."

It's almost funny, looking back on it. How fast he's become her first thought every morning and her last every night. Mere months ago, she'd never met this man, with his tragic eyes and scarred soul. And now, she's pretty sure she'd do anything for him.

What he's just told her, doesn't change that.

"Yes you do. You deserve all of that." He starts to shake his head, to pull away, but she grabs his face, holding him still. "And most of all, you deserve forgiveness. From yourself. Forgive yourself for what you did to survive. _Forgive yourself for surviving_." She's crying, and her heart feels like it's being held in an iron fist, but her words are fervent and strong. "I forgive you, Oliver. I forgive you."

And with that, she kisses him.

It's warm and gentle and soft and _complete_.

It doesn't go further. It doesn't evolve into tongue and teeth and need and want. It's simple and it's quiet, and it's the start of something amazing.

The start of a whole new life for both of them.

The start of a happy story in a sea of gray.

They don't reach for more in that moment, because he just bared his soul and they're both wrought with emotion in the aftermath. There are tears on her cheeks and painful memories linger visibly linger in his mind. It's not the time to fall together. It's not the time for passion and culmination. It's a time for healing, for accepting, for gaining a little piece of hope.

That's what she wants to give him with her gentle kiss. Hope.

And when she slowly pulls away and her eyes meet his, she's rewarded with the sight of exactly that staring back at her.

_Hope_.


	3. without you

_**FINALLY. This chapter gave me hell, and I'm still not happy with it. But I can't stare at it any longer without losing my mind. I hope you like it, and you think it's a good enough ending to the story. **_

_**Please let me know what you think!**_

_Without you my hope is small_

_Let me be me all along_

_You let the fires rage inside_

_Knowing someday I'd grow strong_

She drowns in him. In his arms, in his mouth, in his heart. She drowns and burns and flies to pieces and comes together as whole as she's ever been.

The love she has for him is overwhelming, a heady mix of all the different kinds of affection she can name.

And with the taste of his lips on hers, she knows no one else will ever hold her heart in their hands the way he does.

* * *

That first kiss is the key shifting point in a gradual movement that's been progressing since she first opened her door to him, stepped aside and welcomed him inside.

And from there begins a new journey. One of discovery and restoration.

Felicity learns that when sorrow settles in his eyes, the best way to erase it, is with the press of her lips against his. Gentle and soothing, a whisper of forgiveness, of trust, into his skin that makes him shudder with emotions he can't put into words.

She learns that when the world becomes too much and he feels the walls closing in, the best way to soothe him, is to let him touch her. To feel the warmth of her skin beneath his palms and the steady pulse of her blood beneath his fingers. In those moments he'll wrap his hands around her wrists and rest his forehead against hers, simply feeling the persistence of her life-force, the unflinching rhythm of her heart beating against his until his own slows to meet hers.

It would be so easy to say that from there the road is easy. A beautiful avenue stretching ahead for them to explore hand in hand. But it doesn't work like that. And she's not naive enough to believe that it does.

But after that night, after he bared his soul and darkest secrets, after she stayed beside him instead of turning away as he feared she would, their relationship solidifies into something real and precious.

Something she'll fight to protect.

* * *

Their kisses become a recurring thing, much to her delight. She greets him with a kiss every morning, one that always starts as a gentle brush of her lips against his, on tiptoes with a hand resting on his arm, and quickly devolves into a now familiar dance that leaves her breathless and flushed however many times they repeat it.

It always stops there though, he always pulls away when it starts to get to that point where she's wondering why on earth they're wearing so many clothes.

He always steps back.

She understands why. Understands that he needs to take things at a pace he's comfortable with, and there's no way she'd ever push him faster than he wants to go. With her or with himself.

Every time she kisses him he looks at her like he can't believe she's there. Like he can't understand why she'd want to touch him, why she'd want to press her lips to his with a smile and a sigh of contentment. And every time she sees that look on his face, she kisses him again, a promise that she's not going anywhere, she wants to stay beside him for as long as he'll let her. And she'll always kiss him until he pulls away.

Some things don't change, however. At least not straight away.

His bedroom door remains locked every night. As does hers, and even on nights when she can hear him suffering through nightmares mere feet away, she doesn't break that rule. She does as she did the first time, and calls out to him through the walls, reassures him with nothing but her voice until the darkness recedes to the edges of his consciousness. Comforts him as much as she can, while resisting the urge to simply go to him, to wrap him up in her arms and never let him go because she loves him and the sound of his pain slices unforgiving through her heart.

Felicity's very aware of those two closed doors between them. They're as much symbolic as they are physical.

His nightmares seem to lessen as the weeks pass though, even more than they already had, and the bruises under his eyes slowly fade.

She makes note of the every change that she sees on a daily basis. Like when she drops a cup and yelps in pain as it smashes on her foot, his panic is palpable in the seconds it takes him to get from the living room to the kitchen. But once he takes in the scene, she can almost see the strength defeating the fear in his eyes. And then he's the one calming her.

As his wound heals, he takes to jogging in the park by her house every morning. Slowly remembering that exercise is something he enjoys, not just another form of self-punishment.

They continue to learn more about each other with every day that passes, and although their bagel breakfasts are no longer on the side of the road, they still spend an hour every morning eating together and talking about anything that comes to mind. She hopes they'll always do that. That breakfasts will stay their _thing_.

For someone who spent over two decades thinking herself the antithesis of a morning person, they've quickly become her favorite part of the day.

* * *

"I thought I was dying, you know."

It's a Sunday evening and they're watching an old Disney movie after dinner and a day spent repainting the kitchen, a soft yellow replacing the fading blue of before.

She shifts her head on his shoulder so she can see his face. Her fingers stilling their soothing pattern over his jean clad knee.

"What?"

He does this sometimes. Simply tells her something out of the blue. She always treasures those moments, treasures what he tells her, treasures the fact that it stems from his own desire to share another part of himself with her.

"That night… When I came to the road and found you there." His voice is quiet, and her heart skips a beat at the memory of his blood seeping through her fingers.

"After the bear."

He nods, his eyes distant.

"It didn't bother me. Dying's never really bothered me. But I…" He looks at her, with that gentle, pensive look he gets sometimes, and twists an errant lock of hair around his fingers. "I wanted to be close to you when it happened."

She fights the lump in her throat for long enough to shakily ask "So that's why you came to the road?" It's something she's always wondered about, but never questioned, why he came to her even when it was so past their usual meeting time there was no way he'd expect to find her waiting.

"I didn't think you'd be there, I just wanted to be in our spot when…"

She twists her head and presses a kiss to his shoulder, burying her nose against his t-shirt and breathing in his familiar smell. Soap and sweat and _Oliver_.

The thought doesn't even bear thinking about. And for what must be the hundredth time, she thanks every deity she can name that she stayed that night.

"And there you were." He finishes roughly.

Her fingers tangle with his and she smiles, the ache in her chest dissipating slightly when his lips twitch up in response.

"Thank you for that, Felicity." There's a weight to his words, and his eyes bore into hers with an desperate need for her to hear him. Like it's the most important thanks he's ever uttered.

Her reply slips out unbidden, replacing something more thought out, something to ease his sense of debt. But what she says is perhaps the most genuine thing she can say. Because she means it with ever fiber of her being, from the tips of her fingers held warm in his hands, to the ends of her toes tucked between his shins.

"Anytime."

He kisses her then, ducking his head until his lips meet hers in a gentle caress she'll never tire of. His arm curls around her back to pull her closer and she goes willingly, every inch of her feeling warm and loved.

The movie credits are rolling, accompanied by an old song speaking of hope and happy endings. She wonders if it's too dangerous to wish for such things for them.

When their lips part, he doesn't pull away, turning his face into her cheek, sending shivers down her spine with the scratch of his beard against her skin.

He likes to do that, press his face into hers like he simply wants to breathe her in, just be close to her, feel her skin against his. He reminds her of a cat, rubbing his whiskers on her as a sign of affection, with no motive other than simply wanting her close. It's almost better than the kissing.

_Almost_.

"Are you ever going to tell me how you managed to get attacked by a bear anyway?" She asks after a moment, the intensity of the moment shifting as he chuckles dryly into her neck before pulling away.

"I actually attacked it." He says sheepishly

"_What?_" She frowns at him and he sighs, running a hand over the back of his head.

"It woke me up, rustling around my camp and I… reacted on instinct."

She takes a second to absorb that, before asking the first thing that comes to mind. "Is the bear okay?"

His laugh is warm and fond and leaves her feeling whole in a way she can't really explain.

"It'll live." He assures her, before settling his arm around her shoulders and reaching for the remote to find another film to watch.

* * *

As is usually the rule with life, smooth sailing never lasts long. A storm always hits and the only thing to do is pray that the boat beneath your feet is strong enough to withstand it.

The thing about nightmares, is that sometimes when you wake up from them, they're still there. They cling to the edges of your consciousness, dark shadows that attack when you least expect them to. The same is true for any form of mental distress. It attacks and bites and crushes just when you think that you're going to be okay. And the only thing to do, is pray that your heart and soul are strong enough to control your mind, and keep the demons at bay.

Oliver's demons will never die. And though Felicity's presence, her light and her warmth, hold them in check like nothing ever has before, even she can't always stop them from running free.

* * *

She finds him in the bathroom, curled up in the tub, a pillow beneath his head and a blanket thrown over his body, his feet dangling over the edge to accommodate for his size. Her irises sting as she looks at him, the crease between his eyes and the beads of sweat on his brow evidence of his disturbed sleep.

He's told her not to touch him when he's like this. But he's also told her to follow her instincts, so she does what comes naturally, because she'll start to cry if she doesn't try to help him. Carefully, she climbs in on top of him, keeping her movements slow and smooth, the pressure against his body gentle but firm. His muscles tense and bunch, but he doesn't wake.

She pulls the blanket aside and settles herself against his chest, head resting on his shoulder, the stubble on his jaw scratching her forehead. She curls against him, before tucking the blanket back over the both of them. He twitches, muscles coiled, his heart an uneven rhythm beneath her ear, breathing rough. She turns her head into his neck and presses a soft kiss to the underside of his jaw, a few tears sliding unbidden down her nose to disappear into his shirt.

It breaks her to see him like this, to feel how incapable she is of truly helping him. To know that all she can do is love and support, and wait for him to fight the battles in his mind.

* * *

The next few days are rough. He puts on a brave face for her, and plays it off, blaming the weather or a migraine he can't shake. But she can see that he's struggling.

She's not sure what triggered it, or even if anything did. From what she's learned from her hours of Internet research, PTSD doesn't always need a trigger to rear its spiteful head. Sometimes it's just there and it taunts and belittles for no reason whatsoever.

She tries to help where she can, but she has this chilling feeling that he's slowly turning to sand and slipping away through her fingers as fast as she can try to hold him together. They're in the eye of the storm and she knows that this is the moment they'll either sink or swim. She just isn't sure how to guarantee the outcome she wants.

* * *

A breaking point is reached on a rainy night in August, when she wakes to the sound of him moving around downstairs. She pulls a robe on over her pajamas and pads out to find him. And when she does, any lingering fatigue is quickly replaced by panic.

There's a bag packed by the front door, and Oliver's sitting beside it, bent over a notebook, a shaky hand moving across the page.

She's in front of him before she can blink, yanking the book out of his hands and tossing it aside, her throat burning as she tries to keep her eyes dry for long enough to speak.

"What are you doing?" It's choked and she sounds as angry as she does scared.

He can't meet her eyes and that just makes the panic rise faster and harder because if he won't look at her, how is she supposed to get him to stay? It's irrational and foolish, but losing him isn't an outcome she's willing to live. What they've created together is a bond that's beyond precious, and she knows he feels that too. Knows that however tenuous it might seem to him at times, he believes in what they have.

She falls to her knees before him, her hands reaching for his face, roughly pulling it up until he's forced to look at her. His eyes are cloudy and dark and his name catches in her throat, somewhere between a whisper and a sob.

"What are you doing?" She repeats, because it's all she can think to say, all the air feels like it's been sucked out of the room and she's quite sure that in a few seconds she won't be able to speak at all.

"_Felicity_." It's a prayer on his lips. A cry for help and a plea for forgiveness. "I have to-"

"NO." She doesn't let him finish, for once she doesn't want to hear what he has to say. "You don't have to do anything Oliver. Whatever you're thinking, just stop okay? Just stop."

He looks at her then. Properly looks at her. Looks at her until she feels like he's staring right into her soul.

"This isn't fair on you Felicity. I'm going to have days, weeks, maybe even months like this for the rest of my life. And I can't put you through that. This is never going to stop, this is me, ups and downs and I can't…"

"You can't what? Accept that I don't _care_. I don't care if you spend the rest of your life sleeping in a fucking bathtub as long as it's _our_ bathtub. I don't care Oliver. I just need you to stay. And we'll get through it all together, the good and the bad and the really, really painful. We'll manage." She's crying, tears falling freely, voice breaking over words she'd repeat again and again if that's what it took.

But those demons are there, the hounds that made him run from his home, that made him retreat into solitude as repentance for his sins. They're yapping at his heels and she can see the hope slowly seeping out of him, to be replaced by a dark fog of self-loathing.

"You can't fix me, Felicity." He asserts roughly, dragging his eyes away from her. He rakes a hand down his face and she thinks he's trying to reign himself in, keep himself in check before he changes his mind and stays by her side.

"I'm not trying to fix you. You know why? Because you can't fix what isn't broken."

The pain on his face is cutting and blatant. And all she can think is _how can he not see it? _

She does, every time she looks at him. Every time she looks into those beautiful, tragic eyes, she sees it. His strength, his soul. He's not broken and he never will be, never has been either. She's not his savior or his medicine, she just sees him clearly, and accepts him as he is.

Damaged, yes. Defeated, no.

It takes him a minute to compose himself, and when he does it's with tears of his own threatening to fall. But the darkness isn't giving in without a fight and her fingers shake around his as he speaks.

"Whether you think I'm broken or not doesn't really matter. Either way, I'm not good enough for you." He whispers.

"Why? Give me one good reason. Tell me how you're not good enough for me, Oliver. Because all I know is that you make me happy and I love you. Shouldn't that be enough?"

He rests a hand against her cheek, and she can feel him trembling against her. Feel the weight of his emotions seeping out of every pore. She leans into him, leaning her forehead against his. His hand falls to her neck and his thumb strokes back and forth, chafing at the soft skin. Finding her elevated pulse and drawing comfort from it, in that way he likes to do.

"I don't want you to waste your life on me."

And that's the crux of it, really. They can fight back and forth over who deserves what, but at the end of the day, his lack of self worth will battle against his love for her for as long as he's breathing. All she has to convince him of is that it's worth it. That every moment of doubt, every moment of angst and sadness and _pain, _is worth all the good moments. All the wonderful, beautiful moments that they can share for the rest of their lives if he'll just _stay_.

"Time spent with you could never be a waste." She says the words slowly and carefully, filling them with every drop of sincerity she possesses, every ounce of love she feels for him summed up in ten syllables.

"_Felicity_." He can't keep saying her name like a blessing and a curse and not expect her to crumble to dust before him.

"Don't leave." She abandons reason, because she's quickly losing control of her composure and she just needs him to _understand_. Needs him to hear how much she _needs_ him. More than he'll ever understand. She didn't save him, not in the way he thinks, they're in the process of saving each other, and the thought of losing him is irreconcilable. "I'll never love anyone like I love you. Please don't leave!"

She can see the war raging in his eyes, and whatever battle he's fighting, he either loses or wins, or perhaps it simply gets put on hold and tucked away in a drawer, because then his mouth is on hers and the ice that's been slowly filling her stomach starts to melt.

His lips are rough and hot, a desperation replacing the gentleness she's used to from their kisses. A desperation she feels just as much in her heart as in his. They can both taste her tears. Her chest is tight and painful and her hands scrabble against his shoulders, pulling him closer, afraid he'll disappear if she lets go.

His hands find her waist as his tongue strokes along hers, and she's caught between burning need and aching love.

"_Felicity_." He groans her name into her skin and she can feel the tenuous threads of his control threatening to snap. His body thrumming with the effort of keeping himself in check.

"I trust you Oliver. So trust me, please, I trust you. _Trust me_."

There's a second of hesitation before he lets go, and God does he let go. She's surrounded by him, encompassed by his body and heart and the world could be ending just outside the door and she wouldn't notice or care.

He takes her with him as he stands, pressing her back against the wall, a hand buried in her hair, angling her head to the side so he can kiss her like they've never kissed before. It's deep and hard and hot and she forgets how to think, getting lost in his taste and touch.

A moan escapes her as his lips travel down her neck, wet and hungry, sucking marks into her skin. She barely notices him moving, barely notices as he carries her up the stairs and into her room.

But then he's laying her down on her bed and gazing at her with dark eyes swimming with every emotion in the book, and she thinks it should be impossible to feel as much as she does in that moment.

Feel as much as she does for him.

He descends on her then, all tongue and teeth and strength and love and it's almost _too_ much, just as it's not enough.

She shrugs out of her robe, and his fingers find the hem of tank. He meets her eyes for one last confirmation, her quick nod all the answer he needs before he draws the material up and over her head. He pauses then to take her in, and she should feel exposed and vulnerable, spread before him in nothing but her purple sleep shorts, but she's never trusted a man the way she trusts him. Scars and beard and calloused hands. His reverent gaze and imposing form leave her feeling warm and protected as opposed to intimidated. And she makes sure that that show on her face, in her eyes, in her hands as they trip over his scars. Makes sure he sees the unflinching trust she has in him, and watches as the understanding grows in his own eyes. She trusts him with her body and her heart and anything else he might want to take. He holds it all in his hands, metaphorically and physically, and she wouldn't change it for the world.

She raises a hand to his cheek, the smile she gives him nothing less than adoring. He turns his head and presses a kiss to the inside of her wrist, before following the line of her arm, kissing his way down to the sensitive crease of her elbow, licking a wet stripe into her skin that leaves her gasping before continuing on his path. When he reaches her collarbone he gently bites down, teeth scraping softly against her skin, before soothing the area with his tongue and sucking yet another mark into her flesh.

Her hands run up his back, following the curve of his spine, exploring every muscle and scar, dragging his t-shirt up as they go. He detaches his mouth from her skin for just long enough to lean back and pull the shirt over his head, before he continues his mission to taste every inch of her. His lips trail down her chest, to the valley between her breasts, leaving reverent kisses as he goes. When he finally takes her sensitive peak into his mouth she keens, arching into him, the fine line they're dancing between gestures of love and lust swinging quickly to the latter with every careful scrape of teeth on heated flesh.

Her hands aren't idle, mapping every ridge and dip of his broad back, his strong shoulders. She memorizes scars with the soft pads of her fingers, learns the places that make him shudder and press his hips into hers.

Her shorts soon join their tops on the floor, and his jeans follow not long after. He tells her how beautiful she is, and she repeats the words back to him, which makes him smile into her skin, even as a look of bewildered wonder fills his darkened orbs.

It's not just about sex, about two people who love each other needing to be as close as two people can be, it's about more than that. It's a gesture of trust, a show of intimacy and connection that can't be expressed with just words. It's also a promise. As their bodies join and their eyes meet they both know he couldn't leave her if he tried.

And he's done trying.

* * *

She wakes in the dark to the warmth of his body pressed against hers, and the gentle touch of his fingers sifting through her hair. She looks up at him, to find his eyes already watching her.

"Can't sleep?" She asks softly, and his fingers still in her hair, eyes dropping from their gentle perusal of her face.

"I'm fine." His thumb brushes over her forehead, carefully tracing over the line of her eyebrows before following the curve of her nose. "Close your eyes, it's too early to get up."

She almost does just that, sleep already pulling at the edges of her mind, but she forces her eyes to stay open just a little longer.

"What's keeping you up, Oliver?" She tries to sound firm, a no nonsense voice that requires an answer straight away, but she thinks the effect is probably slightly ruined by the muffled yawn tacked on at the end.

He's silent for a long while, and she's almost given up hope of an explanation when he speaks. His thumb has drifted to her cheek now, and the soft rhythm of his caress is tender and comforting.

"I don't want to hurt you." He sounds so vulnerable then, tired and sad.

She thinks of the two doors that usually stand between them when they sleep, the lecture he gave her when he first walked into her home, the baseball bat he wanted her to keep by her bed for fear she would have to defend herself against him in the night.

"You can go back to your room if you want. I won't be upset, because you need your sleep. But… I trust you." She wonders how many times she'll have to repeat those three words before he believes her. "I don't think you'll hurt me if you let yourself sleep. I trust you, Oliver."

She stretches up and presses a lingering kiss to his lips, before snuggling back down under the covers and letting her eyes drift shut. It's his decision to make, and she'll give him the space he needs to make it. That's really all she can do in these moments, give her opinion and then give him time to work through his thoughts and come to a conclusion on his own. She hopes she's doing okay, hopes she's doing everything she can to help him.

The next time she wakes it's to the feel of a chest rising and falling beneath her head, and the warm weight of an arm curled around her back. The mottled morning light falls over Oliver's sleeping face, painting him in colors and patterns that almost hurt her soul in their beauty. She tucks her head back into his shirt and feels a wide smile creep across her lips.

She's happy. And she thinks maybe, he might be happy too.

* * *

Slowly, one baby step at a time, they ease into a somewhat normal way of life. They start going out for dinner at the weekends, they take walks along the river, they visit exhibitions, and even attend a baseball game. It turns out pre-war Oliver was a bit of a sports nut, and although Felicity was worried about the crowds and noises, he loved every minute of it.

They avoid cinemas, the dark and crowded rooms a recipe for disaster, and they find that he struggles in certain shops. She'd ducked into a crowded Apple store once, to look at some new tablets, but it hadn't taken a genius to see the anguish on Oliver's face beneath the fluorescent lights. So she pulled him out with a smile and a kiss on the cheek and assured him that she'd check out the tablets by herself another time.

When he has bad nights, he sleeps in his room with the two doors closed between them, but on the good nights she falls asleep wrapped in his arms, and wakes up to his smile.

They fight when she receives her monthly bank statement to find a large transfer from him sitting in her account. It's enough to cover the rent of her small townhouse for the whole year. But when she tries to give it back to him, he explains that while he chooses not to use his money, he has more than he'll ever need. He feels indebted to her as it is, and sees covering the rent as the least he can do for her in return. That spurns a rather long conversation about preconceived debts that _do not _exist, and ends with sex on the kitchen table and an agreement that they'll split the rent.

She does worry a little about his social isolation; he doesn't talk to anyone aside from her, at least not in a personal way. She knows he has a few friends at the local gym he joined down the road, and he'll chat to them when he's there, but she's his only support system.

So one night she quietly gives him a piece of paper with the numbers of three of the best psychiatrists in the city scrawled across it, with a note explaining that should he ever feel the need to seek any sort of professional help, he should do so. But only if it's completely, one hundred percent something that he wants to do. They don't talk about it, but he doesn't throw away the numbers.

* * *

It's not until she comes home one evening to find him gazing at a picture of his sister that she dares broach the topic of him reconnecting with his family. She's spent hours considering the best way to bring it up, the perfect way to say it, and in the end she asks him like it's a matter of pizza preferences. She's learned over time that the best way to talk to him, is to simply do what feels best in the moment.

"We could go and visit them if you want." Her voice is light and calm, and she sits down beside him, resting her chin on his shoulder and gazing down at the photo in his hands.

"I'm not sure they'd want anything to do with me." He says quietly, and she sighs, shifting a little closer until she's completely pressed against his side.

"I can guarantee you they would."

He tucks the picture back into his pocket and turns to press a kiss to her forehead.

"Maybe." He stands and pulls her to her feet with her hands in his. "But in the meantime, what do you say to chicken Parmesan?"

* * *

But two weeks later, as they're lying tangled in bed, his hand stroking patterns up and down her spine, he's the one to ask.

"Would you do something with me this weekend?"

She twists so she can see his face and chuckles lightly into his shoulder.

"I do lots of things with you every weekend, you'll have to be more specific."

"It's Thea's birthday in a few weeks, and I was thinking maybe it's time… Maybe I'm ready." He almost can't get the words out and she knows the guilt of leaving his family still weighs heavily on his mind.

"You want to go see them?" She tries to keep her voice casual, not give away her excitement at the idea. Because this is a huge step. Not for them as a couple, although perhaps it is in that way too, but it's a huge step for him.

He was so afraid of hurting the people he loved that he cut them out of his life altogether. He denied himself the good moments to save them from the bad, just as he tried to do with her. But he stayed with her, he accepted the fact that she loves him, dark days and all. And although she knows he sometimes still struggles to reconcile himself with the fact that she actually wants him to stay with her, that she actually wants to know him inside and out, good and bad, he's stopped trying to convince her to change her mind.

She knows his family will feel the same way about having him in their lives, and desperately wants him to discover that for himself.

"You'll come with me?" He's such a big man, so strong and capable, but in that moment he sounds as vulnerable as a child asking his mother to leave the door ajar to keep out the dark.

"Of course I will."

* * *

The driveway is long and winds ahead like a ribbon, the gate a wrought iron defense against anything that may dare seek entrance without permission. She can see what he meant before, when he described how overwhelming it was to come back here after years in the desert.

She feels his hand tighten around hers as he drives towards the gatehouse, rolling down the window until the stony faced guard can see him. The man makes a valiant effort to hide his surprise, but fails pretty spectacularly, fumbling for the controls without a word, the gate swinging open quickly.

They drive forward and she strokes a rhythmic pattern across his knuckles, feeling his tension right down to her bones.

"You don't have to do this, you know." She says softly. He glances towards her quickly, eyes running over her face, before they're trained back on the road. "If it's too much for today, it's fine. There's no shame in that." She continues, and his hand gently squeezes hers, thumb brushing against the inside of her wrist, feeling the thrum of her pulse.

"I'm okay. I need to do this now." His voice is low and quiet, but determined, humming with that strength that she thinks must come from an endless fountain within him.

But then he looks across at her again, and there's a hint of vulnerability on his face, an openness that he doesn't show with anyone else, something she's grown to treasure as further evidence of his trust in her.

"Just stay with me?" He whispers and she feels a surge of protectiveness for him rush from her heart to the very tips of her fingers.

He's big and strong and he'd jump to her defense without blinking. He'd put himself between her and a bullet, between her and anything that might cause her harm. She'd do that for him too, of course, but knows it's not quite the same. She doesn't have the ability to fight off an attacker, to protect him from bruises or broken bones as he does her. But she protects his heart. His soul. His mind.

"I promise." She whispers fiercely, and she can see that he understands that she's not just talking about today, but every day that lies ahead of them.

When she climbs out of the car and gets a proper look at the building in front of her, she realizes that 'house' is a loose term. She's sure there are a hundred Royalty puns that could be made, but she manages to hold her tongue. He's no doubt heard them all already.

She expects him to walk straight towards the door, but instead he comes around to her side to meet her. Standing in front of her, he looks at her for a second that quickly becomes a minute, before he's ducking down and pressing a brief kiss to her lips.

"Stay with me." He says again, and she's nodding even before he's got the words out.

His hand finds hers, and with their fingers laced together, he turns and walks towards the main entrance, towing her behind him.

He rings the bell, and she briefly wonders how strange it must be for him, to ring the bell on his own front doorstep. But then she realizes that he doesn't see this as his home anymore. And thinks that that must be even stranger.

A man in a suit answers the door, stepping to the side and holding it open without so much as blinking. Felicity realizes that the gatekeeper must have called ahead to let them know who to expect.

They step into the foyer together, feet in sync, despite their divided attentions. She twists and turns, eyes wide as she takes in the glamour and wealth that this house seems to drip with. While his gaze seems to shift between the floor and her.

A ragged gasp fills the echo-y expanse of the room, and Felicity's eyes fly to the source, feeling Oliver tense as his do the same.

Because there, standing at the bottom of the staircase, is a young, beautiful girl, looking at him like the moon just floated down from the heavens to hang just for her.

"Thea." He breathes the word and his hand tightens around Felicity's to the point of pain.

"_Ollie!_"

She's a blur of movement and Felicity tenses as the girl throws herself into Oliver's arms. Her hand remains firmly held in his as she silently wills him to stay calm. It takes him a second but she can see the moment he relaxes, and then his spare arm is wrapping around the Thea's back and holding her tightly against him, a ghost of a smile finding its way onto his face.

"I missed you." She whispers into his shoulder and Felicity feels a lump grow in her throat. She looks away to give the siblings as much privacy as she can, while still anchored to Oliver's side.

She feels the moment another part of him heals. With his sister crying happy tears into his shoulder and a few minutes later when he ducks down so his mother can reach up to kiss his forehead, as she must have done when he was a child.

It's overwhelming for him, undoubtedly, but healing nonetheless. The weight of his guilt over leaving them eases with every minute he spends surrounded by their unwavering love. And when they welcome Felicity with nothing but warmth and grace, his hand finally eases its grip on hers.

They don't spend all that long with his family. They stay for lunch, but as the hours pass, she can tell when it starts to become too much. They leave with promises of returning soon, and there's a light in Oliver's eyes that's as rare as it is beautiful.

And later that night, when they're eating dinner in the house she's come to think of as theirs, his gaze finds hers with a thank you that's intense with sincerity.

"You've given me everything, Felicity. I don't know why the world thought I deserved someone like you in my life, but I'll spend every day thanking God that it did."

With her lips a mere breath away from his, she promises the same.

* * *

His first _I love you_ comes in the wake of a difficult reunion with his old training officer, John Diggle. She doesn't go with him for that one, both of them realizing that it's something he needs to do alone. She thinks it will be good for him to reconnect with someone who experienced similar things as he did. Who can truly understand what he's going through, who can help in ways she'll probably never be able to. She's right about that, in the end. But it takes time. And he stumbles home from their first meeting looking haggard and older than his thirty odd years. They don't speak, there's no need. He crumbles against her, where she sits at on the couch. She quickly moves her laptop from her lap and lets Oliver take its place.

They've grown accustomed to understanding what the other needs without words. Learned how to provide comfort in just the right way, at just the right time.

Sometimes he'll pull her into her arms and surround her with his strength, pressing kisses into her hair and in those moments her sorrow never stands a chance. And sometimes he comes to her like this, buries his face into the crook of her neck, letting her hair shield him from the world. She rubs her fingers in soothing circles over his tense shoulders, until the muscles slowly relax.

Words don't always come easily to him. He's the stoic, silent type, who often says more with his eyes and body than his mouth. She knows he loves her. He shows her every day, and since the night he chose her over his fear, she's had no doubt in her heart that his love matches her own.

But it's not until that afternoon, after a painful trip down memory lane that he says the words out loud. He whispers it into her skin, his stubble scratching her collarbone, his breath warm against her neck.

"I love you, Felicity."

And even though she already knew it, her heart still skips a beat or two, swelling with something resembling adoration.

She cards her fingers through his hair, now cropped short, and leans closer to him, until they're as close as two people can be while still wearing clothes.

"I love you too, Oliver." She replies, turning her head until her lips are against his temple. His hands tighten around her, and they stay like that for what seems like hours, neither willing to move and break the spell.

Diggle quickly becomes a regular in their lives, much to everyone's happiness. Felicity grows fond of the older man and falls head over heels in love with his baby daughter. And Oliver gradually regains another connection he cut off in his quest for absolution.

They have Sunday lunches together, and sometimes Thea and Moira will join them too, a mismatched hotchpotch of people gathered around Felicity's kitchen table, drinking wine and learning that family comes in all shapes and sizes.

On those days, Oliver will catch her eye across a room full of friends, with a look of such overwhelming gratitude that it floors her.

She knows that in his mind, he would never have any of this without her. And while they disagree on that point, with her insistence that he would have found his way even without her, she's as grateful as he that things happened the way they did.

* * *

The weight on his broad shoulders will never fully shift, nor will the sadness that rests deep in the blue of his eyes. The damage to his heart is permanent and destructive, but it's the fight that defines him, not the scars. He puts one foot in front of the other, every day, discovering new reasons to smile, new reasons to laugh, new reasons to keep going.

That's really the most important thing she's given him. Perhaps the only thing she's given him. A _reason_ to fight. A reason to _want_ to take those steps every day, a reason begin the healing process. As endless as it may be.

And for Felicity, that's all she could ever ask for. His strength is his own, it's fierce and beautiful and she'll remind him of that every day until he believes it as wholeheartedly as she does.

Whatever's to come, whatever more life chooses to throw at them, together or apart, the strength they find in the other's eyes will be enough to get them through to the other side.

With cream cheese bagels and a love that grew from nothing to _everything, _Felicity's confident they'll stand the test of time.

_Without you, without you_

_A sailor lost at sea_

_Without you_

_The world comes down on me_

AN:

_**One of the reasons I decided to write this story is to address one of my main problems with the writing on the show. PTSD isn't something that can be thrown casually into a conversation and then forgotten about. It isn't something that effects a person when it's convenient and then simply drifts into the background when it's not. I was diagnosed with PTSD when I was fourteen years old. Six years have passed since then and it's still something that I actively suffer from on a daily basis. It has effected my life in more ways than I can name. And yes, there are days, weeks even when it doesn't rule my every move, but it's still there. A constant that will never go away. It's not often spoken about, but PTSD is an illness that one never fully heals from. In my psychiatrist's words, some people learn to manage it, while others let it manage them, but no one ever truly leaves it behind. TV writers are often guilty of touching on topics that they don't have any true understanding of, and many, myself included, let it pass unmentioned because we don't have first hand knowledge of what they're talking about either. But this is something I do know about, something I do suffer from, and I wanted to make my feelings about their almost callous treatment of a serious mental illness known. PTSD is not a party line, it fucking sucks and it never goes away.**_


End file.
